Literacy may be defined in a mother tongue or in a national language and this is likely to
affect the number of illiterates identified. Direct methods that involve standardised testing are
expensive to administer and also suffer from problems of reliability and validity. Wagner
(1990) proposes a new approach to assessment which employs both direct and indirect
measures of literacy, attempts to differentiate levels of facility, and recognises the context in
which literacy is acquired and used.
UNESCO has developed a series of concepts which illustrate some of the shifting approaches
that have been employed in literacy projects. These include fundamental education,
community development, universal literacy, work orientated literacy and cultural literacy.
However according to Jones (1990) none of these have stayed in place long enough to have
acquired an adequate theoretical grounding. In reality many of the assertions made in the
literature about relationships between literacy and development are hypotheses for which
there may be circumstantial evidence but no rigorous justification. While it is generally
accepted that literacy is a necessary condition for access to ideas from the wider world and
that "modernisation" in attitudes and dispositions is closely associated with the possession of
literacy, more specific relationships have proved difficult to unravel. This is partly because
literacy is a social construction and is significant in determining, and being determined by,
the prevailing social order (Oxenham 1980). It is being increasingly recognised that literacy is
a relative construct and is in practice context dependent. Global definitions therefore appear
both elusive and unattainable (Winchester (1990). The implication is that literacy
programmes need clear objectives that are grounded in different socio-economic contexts and
that criteria for improvement are unlikely to be universal, or if they are they will be at the
lowest level of cross cultural generalisation.
2.7.2 Literacy and development
Literacy for liberation and empowerment was the prevailing theme of much research and
intervention with literacy programmes over the last decade (Freire and Macedo, 1987). From
this perspective literacy is an important trigger for social emancipation. Some of these ideas
were echoed in a recent seminar (Commonwealth Institute, 1990) which viewed literacy
programmes within non-formal interventions designed to culturalise, liberate and empower
the deprived. Some commentators have reservations about the possible unwanted
consequences of literacy (Winchester 1990). Governments frequently wish to remain in
control of non-formal initiatives that may challenge the role of the state in distributing
resources. Empowerment may lead to direct conflict between the relatively powerless and the
powerful. Marshall's (1990) participant observation of literacy training in a Mozambican
factory reports that ordinary worker's fear and experience of subordination encouraged them
to regard literacy as a means of altering their positions in the power hierarchy. Their
expectations were based on what it appeared to have done for others in the factory. Her study
pieces together how literacy was linked in with other interlocking structures for distributing
power and influence - gender, race and class. Mukhapadyaya (1990) reports on a literacy